Young Miles - Lois McMaster Bujold [54]
The man grinned. "I just don't buy you, Shorty. I'm not afraid of a little pain."
I am afraid, thought Miles. He stepped aside. "He's yours, Sergeant."
"Hold him still," said Bothari. Miles grasped the prisoner's right arm; Mayhew, looking puzzled, held the left.
The mercenary took in Bothari's face, and his grin slipped. One edge of Bothari's mouth turned upward, in a smile Miles had never seen before and immediately hoped he would never see again. The mercenary swallowed.
Bothari placed the tip of the dagger against the side of the silver button on the man's right temple and wriggled it a little, to slip it beneath the edge. The mercenary's eyes shifted right, gone white-rimmed. "You wouldn't dare. . . ." he whispered. A drop of blood ringed the circle in a quick blink. The mercenary inhaled sharply, and began, "Wait—"
Bothari twisted the knife sideways, grasped the button between the thumb and fingers of his free hand, and yanked. A ululating scream broke from the mercenary's throat. He lunged convulsively from Miles's and Mayhew's grasp and fell to his knees, mouth open, eyes gone huge in shock.
Bothari dangled the implant before the man's eyes. Hair-fine wires hung like broken spider legs from the silver button body. He twirled it, with a glittering gleam and a spatter of blood, thousands of Betan dollars' worth of viral circuitry and microsurgery turned instantly to trash.
Mayhew, watching, went the color of oatmeal at this incredible vandalism. The breath went out of him in a tiny moan. He turned his back and went to lean against the wall in a corner. After a moment, he bent over, stifling vomiting.
I wish he hadn't witnessed that, thought Miles. I wish I'd kept Daum instead. I wish . . .
Bothari squatted down to his victim's level, face-to-face. He raised the knife again, and the mercenary pilot recoiled, to bash into the wall and slide into a sitting position, unable to retreat farther. Bothari placed the dagger's point against the button on the man's forehead.
"Pain is not the point," he whispered hoarsely. He paused, then added even more quietly, "Begin."
The man found his tongue abruptly, pouring out betrayal in his terror. There was, thought Miles, no question of clever subterfuge in the information tripping frantically out of his mouth. Miles overcame his own trembling belly to listen intently, carefully, thoroughly, that nothing be lost or missed or wasted. Unbearable, that this sacrifice should be wasted.
When the man began to repeat himself, Bothari pulled him cringing to his feet and frog-marched him to the shuttle hatch corridor. Elena and the others stared uncertainly at the mercenary, a trickle of blood threading down from his gored temple, but asked no questions. At the slightest prodding from Bothari the captured pilot officer, hasty and barely coherent, explained the internal layout of the light cruiser. Bothari pushed him aboard and strapped him in a seat, where he collapsed and burst into shocking sobs. The others looked away from the prisoner uneasily, and chose seats as far from him as possible.
Mayhew sat gingerly before the manual controls of the shuttle, and flexed his fingers.
Miles slid in beside him. "Are you going to be able to fly this thing?"
"Yes, my lord."
Miles took in his shaken profile. "You going to be all right?"
"Yes, my lord." The shuttle's engines whined to life, and they kicked away from the side of the RG 132. "Did you know he was going to do that?" Mayhew demanded suddenly, low-voiced. He glanced back over his shoulder at Bothari and his prisoner.
"Not exactly."
Mayhew's lips tightened. "Crazy bastard."
"Look, Arde, you better keep this straight," murmured Miles. "What Bothari does on my orders is my responsibility, not his."
"The hell you say. I saw the look on his face. He enjoyed that. You didn't."
Miles hesitated, then repeated himself with a different emphasis, hoping to make Mayhew understand. "What Bothari does is my responsibility. I've known it for a long time, so I don't excuse myself."
"He is psychotic, then," hissed Mayhew.